The Campus Murders

10

The next morning at eight-thirty McCall intercepted Kathryn Cohan at the entrance to the administration building. He took pleasure in watching how she approached with her slow and easy female walk, how the sun flicked sparks off her auburn hair. She was wearing something short and free in kelly green and she seemed to McCall to bring with her the essence of the spring.

“Hi, Mike!”

She was glad to see him, and this warmed him. He wanted to take her hand and had to lecture himself.

“You’ve heard, I take it,” he said.

“About the girl’s being found? It’s all over ’Squanto. And poor Floyd... it’s a nightmare. I hear Rose Gunther’s absolutely prostrate, poor thing. Is Laura all right?”

“Last night she was still in a coma. I haven’t heard yet this morning.”

“Mike. Is there any lead to who murdered Floyd?”

He allowed himself a neutral shake of the head. “I want to catch Damon Wilde before he goes to his first class, if I can. Where’s the Phi Delt house?”

She gave him directions. “You’d better hurry if you want to catch him. Good luck, Mike.” She touched his arm. “I’ve got to fly. Ina gets to her desk around eight. I’m her cross, she says.”

“Happy the guy who’s crucified on you,” McCall heard himself say with a flight of gallantry that astounded him.

“Why, Mr. McCall!” Then Kathryn laughed and ran into the building.

The Phi Delt house looked like money, a huge ranch-type fieldstone with a sweeping drive, standing on grounds heavily landscaped with flowering shrubs and flower beds. A stone mountain lion snarled on the front lawn; it was spattered with red paint. The house looked asleep. Maybe it’s the silence, McCall thought.

McCall parked in the drive, crunched across blue and white gravel, and pressed the bell.

He deliberately emptied his mind. He had found that preconceptions were almost always upset by the reality, indeed, got in the way. Instead, he concentrated on the Thornton girl lying yellow-pale in the hospital bed, barely breathing; on how Floyd Gunther’s torn body had looked lying under the oak behind the Bell Tower.

The door opened and a round young face poked out. The face was attached to a round young body swathed in an orange sweater and adhesive pants. All McCall could think of was an up-ended pumpkin. With a handlebar mustache.

“Is Damon Wilde in?”

“Oh, Christ, another one,” the young man said. “Okay, come in.”

The boy stepped aside. McCall entered. It was cool in the house; there was a faint unwashed odor. The student pointed down the hall. “Damon’s in number nine.”

“Thank you.” To the right was an immense room, high-ceilinged, black-beamed. The ashes of a dozen fires were piled up in a huge fieldstone fireplace.

Somebody was playing a guitar somewhere. The tune was “Poor Butterfly.”

“Don’t mind that corn,” the boy in the orange sweater said. “He simply isn’t with it.”

McCall walked down the hall and knocked on the door of number nine.

“Sack the rattle!” somebody called. “Yes?”

McCall opened the door. “Damon Wilde?”

A well-muscled young man, blond and crew-cut, naked to the waist, with lather on his face, stood in a doorway beyond the mussed bed, razor in hand.

“Yeah?”

McCall flipped open his credentials case.

“I’m impressed,” Wilde said.

McCall stared at him. “I hope so. It should make our talk more agreeable.”

“Oh, sweet Jeese,” Wilde said. “Is it all right if I finish shaving?”

Wilde moved back into the tiny lavatory and began scraping away.

“You and Laura Thornton have been very close,” McCall said.

“That’s no secret,” Wilde said. “Next?”

McCall leaned against the jamb. “I don’t think you fully understand what you’re up against, Mr. Wilde,” he said. “Flippancy isn’t going to get you anywhere. This has gone far beyond the smart-crack stage. I suppose you’ve heard that Laura’s been found. She’s in a coma. She may very well die. I think a little seriousness is called for.”

Wilde did not reply. It seemed to McCall that the boy was nervous — he had difficulty keeping the razor steady as he shaved his upper lip — but there was a defiant thrust to his jaw, a veiled something that might have hidden a fear.

“You may be up to your ears in jam,” McCall said.

Wilde finished shaving. From the depths of a towel he mumbled, “Okay. So go ahead.”

“When did you see Laura last?”

“Thursday night.”

“At the Greenview Motel?”

He knew he had struck pay dirt from the elaborate way Wilde tried to be nonchalant. McCall watched him open a bureau drawer, select a white shirt, put it on, button it, tuck it in, open a closet, pick out a sweater, slip it over his head.

Finally he said, “What makes you say that?”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“The answer is no.”

“You weren’t at the Greenview Motel Thursday night?”

“No.”

“How about before last Thursday night?”

Wilde shook his head.

“I have a feeling we could get along,” McCall said, “if you’d play ball.”

To his surprise Wilde burst into laughter. “Holy cow and twenty-three skiddoo,” her jeered. “You’re leaving out ‘A Message to Garcia.’”

“Look,” McCall said, “flattery will get you nowhere. I know you’ve been at the Greenview Motel with Laura Thornton, Wilde.” He was certain he was right. “You registered a number of times under the names Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Addison. Or rather Laura did the registering. You apparently didn’t have the guts to do it yourself.”

The blond boy flushed. “It wasn’t that... all right! So I shacked up with Laura there. But not Thursday night, Mr. McCall. Thursday we just rode around.”

“Around by the river?”

“No! We didn’t go near the river.”

“Where did you go?”

“Oh, hell, just around.” He glanced nervously at his wristwatch with its white and black mod strap. “You’ll have to continue this in our next, McCall, I’ve got a class and I’m late now—”

“You’ll have to miss it. This can’t wait.”

“For God’s sake, I’ve been questioned by the fuzz till it’s coming out of my ears!”

“You haven’t been questioned by me. Sit down!”

Wilde sat down on the bed, shrugging.

“Have you heard about Dean Gunther?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that all? Just yeah?”

“What do you want me to do, tear my clothes?” Wilde said sullenly. “I’m sorry to hear it.”

“Any ideas?”

“No!”

“Did you notice anything different about Laura Thursday?”

“No.” Too quickly.

“Come on, Damon.”

“Come on where?”

“She did act differently, didn’t she?”

“Well, so what? It bugged me a little. She was thinking about something else all the time. Or somebody. All the time we were making out.”

“And you didn’t like it.”

“Who would? Her heart wasn’t in it. I mean, she wasn’t with it... I don’t go for this, Mr. McCall. I don’t like you a whole lot, to be frank. I don’t like talking about this. I had nothing to do with what happened to Laura.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“You’re all alike, every one of you!” Wilde jumped up and planted a big shoe on the bed. “The voice of authority. You think you’ve got life sewed up. The security bag. Wow. Give the man a badge and he comes on like Prince Albert.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You ever smoke Prince Albert?”

“No.”

“You’re not with it, dad... it always jells out the same way. We get stomped, one way or another.”

“Who does?”

“The students!” He was growling now. “Why are we here? What’s it accomplish but keep us out of the army?”

“That’s not what I’m interested in this morning, Wilde.”

“You’re telling me. Who is interested? Any time? That’s just the effing trouble. Look at this poor excuse for a college.”

“All right,” McCall said, dragging over a chair. “Tell me about it.”

“What have we got to say about anything? Nothing! It’s going to change. You better believe it. Why the hell are we militant? Because nothing else works. The New Left is one way, but it has to be backed up with imagination. Maybe what happened last night would have helped.”

“You mean burning Gunther in effigy?”

“That’s right. We wanted to get under his skin, make him react. Maybe if he felt a hurt he’d show some sympathy with our problems, take some positive action. The last thing in the world we wanted was for somebody to murder him. All that means is that we have to start in all over again on somebody else in authority.”

“You’re a hard case, Damon.”

“Golly, man, the words you come on with. I’m awed. Look! I don’t swing out all the way. I mean, it’s not my bag. But you ought to get with it a little bit. Who condones murder, for Chrissake? You’re barking up the wrong oak tree. It’s just that we’ve got to have a voice. Can’t you dig that? It’s like being inside a cage yelling your head off, pounding on the bars, and nothing happens, nobody lifts a finger, just stands around in silence. Wolfe Wade sits there behind his desk combing the worms out of his hair. He’s in a wet dream of yesterday. This is today, man! Don’t you get it?”

McCall nodded. “Of course I do.”

“Just a voice is all. We have ideas, some good ones. It’s time people got over the stupid notion that youth doesn’t know. I’m not a Yippie, or even a hippie, I’m just a student. But I want them to listen to me, and their ears are stuffed with wax.”

“Let’s get back to the issue, Damon.”

“Laura.”

“Yes.”

“And the dean. You think I did that to Laura?”

“I’ll find out if you did.”

Wilde smacked the bed with his fist. It was a formidable one, and McCall watched it. “Oh, baby. You sound like my father. Bugger it! You want to know something? I didn’t like Laura that much. She thinks she’s so great. Come to think of it, I don’t like her at all.” He glanced at his watch and turned away.

McCall knew he had struck a chord somewhere. The boy figured he had said too much and had tuned out.

“I have to go now,” Damon Wilde said.

“I may want to see you again.”

Wilde said suddenly, “I don’t know what you or the fuzz are going to do about Laura, but we don’t like that sort of thing. Dig? What happened to Laura will... well... take care of itself.”

“Somebody forming a vigilante group?” McCall asked, smiling.

“Don’t partronize me,” Wilde barked. “Look, why don’t you go bug Denny Sullivan or Perry Eastman? They’ve been sucking around Laura, too.”

“I intend to do that,” McCall said.

“Fine,” Wilde said. “And the hell with you.” And he rushed out, cursing.

McCall glanced around. There was no point in searching Wilde’s room; the police had undoubtedly done so, and besides Laura’s boyfriend did not strike him as dull. An eye-hurting psychedelic poster hung over a cluttered desk. Above the bed glowered blowups of Humphrey Bogart and Malcolm X.

He heard the front door open and bang shut.

He started down the hall. The young pumpkin with the handlebar mustache was waiting for him with a solemn expression.

“He’s something of a challenge, isn’t he, Mr. McCall?” the young man said. “I mean Damon. Ballsy. Look, I’m James Tuttle the Third. They call me the Trinity around here. I know about you. Everybody does. We’ve been waiting for you to come around and run Damon through the computer. Look, Damon’s sore because Laura was seen with another guy Friday noon. If you think he acted kind of funny, that’s the reason.”

McCall did not even blink.

“Who was the other fellow, James?”

“Dennis Sullivan.”

“As long as you’re being so informative,” McCall said, “just how close were Sullivan and Laura? Damon mentioned something about his ‘making out.’ Was Sullivan, too?”

“You’d better ask him.” Tuttle waved a delicate forefinger. “In fact, Mr. McCall, you’ll have to find out anything else all by your V.I.P. lonesome. I’m no fink, and you better believe it.”

“Then I take it,” McCall said, smiling, “you don’t care for Mr. Sullivan.”

“You can take it,” James Tuttle the Third smiled back, “and, sir, you can stuff it. The egress is this way.”

McCall stepped outside.

Immediately he reopened the door and stepped back inside. Young Tuttle had disappeared. McCall went into the big common room. Nobody was there. He made for the phone he had spotted near the door.

He got Kathryn Cohan without difficulty and she supplied him with Dennis Sullivan’s address. “How about getting together soon?” McCall asked.

Kathryn said, “Oh, but you’re too busy, Mr. McCall,” and he heard her laugh as she hung up.

Dennis Sullivan lived in a rooming house a few blocks off campus.

Driving along, McCall chewed his cud. The beating of Laura Thornton and Dean Gunther’s murder were connected. He did not know why he was sure of this, but he had always been a hunch player... he wondered if he should not have questioned Wilde about the notes and decided that he had been wise not to. If the student had knowledge of them, he would hardly admit it; the only result would have been to alert him that McCall — and probably the police — knew about them.

Had Dean Gunther really been playing around with one of these attractive college kids? Gunther was the right age for that sort of thing; he dimly glimpsed that Rose Gunther was a washout. And one never knew what another man was capable of.

He had to assume, in view of the notes, that Gunther was guilty of indiscretions if not downright flagrancy. What could have happened last night? Gunther had sneaked out to meet a coed whom he had been having an affair with. He had met death instead.

McCall stopped at a curbside phone booth to call the hospital.

Laura Thornton’s condition was unchanged.